


Mausoleum In The Woods

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Family, Fraymotifs, Gen, Grieving, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Magical Realism, Pregnancy, aspect horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Mom expires. Dave assists with the funeral proceedings.
Relationships: Dave Strider & Rose Lalonde, Rose Lalonde & Roxy Lalonde
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	Mausoleum In The Woods

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is really old! thank you to everyone who commented on the original. i finally came up with a proper ending for this strilondian gothic, but i had to do some large-scale renovations to make everything fit. the final product has been considerably reduxed. i hope you enjoy! ^u^ full warnings at the bottom

The ride upstate takes seven hours and the fog stays thick the whole way through. Dave entertains himself by pressing his cheek to the window and peering out with one eye, letting his breath fog up the glass on his exhales and his skin melt a hot circle in the condensation. He pretends that the Greyhound Bus is a probe boring its way through a new kind of outer space, a nothingness where instead of darkness there is an impenetrable, terrible white on all sides.

It helps him stay calm. Every so often there's a gap in the whiteness and dark wet tree trunks show through, dim and glistening, whizzing by.

Rose called him on the phone late last night. She didn't say much, but all the same Dave was on an early flight to JFK by morning, and by noon bundled into a bus and skidding north towards Rose's childhood home.

Her voice was just as softly sarcastic as ever, sounding exactly like it did back when they were roommates and Dave actually knew what was going on in Rose's life. It was as chill as antifreeze, as sweet as a cocktail. It was hard and black as iron. She wasn't crying, but her breathing sounded thick over the grainy phone mic. There were muted clinking noises on the other side of the line, ice in a glass, and rustling like she kept turning in her sheets.

Her mother's body had already been embalmed by the time Dave's plane took off. On the bus, to kill time he pictures what Rose might be up to. How she might look picking out a casket, ordering tombstone and flower arrangement with infinite poise. 

It's been so long since he's seen her that some details of her appearance are difficult to recall. Others, though, are so vivid that Dave can almost see them throbbing through the mist. 

Her tense, twitching knuckles crossed with little blue veins. Foundation creasing a tiny frown line. Her soft pale hair.

As Dave stares out into the mist, it thins briefly, and for a moment he thinks he sees a black cat with far too many legs, and eyes where there shouldn’t be. The sight is shocking enough that Dave feels a terrible lurch--

But it was just the bus, arriving at his stop. 

Dave shakes his head, steps off the bus with his carry-on trailing behind. Slung over his shoulder is a black suit, immaculate in hanger and plastic from the rental store, flapping behind him in the listless breeze.

The damp air sticks to his skin and clothes immediately, and by the time he's wiped the moisture off of his glasses and turned to look, the cat, if there ever was one, is gone, leaving nothing but a vague bad feeling in its wake.

The bus disappears into the mist. Dave stands at the side of the road for a moment, the back of his neck prickling, before setting off in the opposite direction.

The forest is uniform and empty, rows of haphazard black trunks repeating ad nauseum into the mist. As he walks on, though, the silhouette of the mansion begins to grow in the distance. 

It is bafflingly large even at a distance, filtered through bare forest and fog. As Dave draws nearer it continues to grow, until its dark shape pierces into focus. First the tiled attic windows, then the parapets and cornices, until feature by feature the house pushes itself out of the blank wetness and stands among the trees in its full monstrous size.

Parts of it are distinctly Victorian, in varying states of derelict. There’s an ultramodern fallingwater type fixture running underneath the whole mess, though, spilling over a cliff that terminates perilously close to the edge of the mansion. A mausoleum inexeblicaby stands sentry nearby, partially concealed by conifers.

Dave, very suddenly, is tiny in the shadow of the manor, as well as standing face to face with Rose.

Her wool peacoat is soaking wet and her hair frizzy and drooping; she must have been waiting for a while in the rain, but she doesn't look annoyed.

"I'm so glad you're here.” She says. “Would you like to come inside?"

The entryway yawns behind her. Dave shivers. Nods. Rose removes a key from her purse and unlocks the door.

Every click of her heels on the spongy floorboards kicks up a dense pillow of debris. How is the place such a mess, Dave thinks, if the old woman died just last night?

Rose’s face doesn’t betray anything. She glances across the hallway as she makes her way through, back and forth, the proprietary left-right flick of a sonar scan. Her mouth is pulled tight in a way that could be a frown, or a smile. 

The fact that she’s barely said a word since she greeted him is beginning to sting Dave, but he reminds himself that she has a lot on her mind (her mother just died, you insensitive brute) and focuses on matching the rhythm of their steps and examining the twin wakes of dust they leave behind.

Everything is dark and filmy. The windows lining the entryway are paneled with stained glass, and the only light that they allow into the hall is murky and faint . Rose leads Dave past the mouths of staircases opening on musty darkness, grandfather clocks and picture windows, continuing in a straight line for such a long time that the decor begins to blend together. _Who in their right mind would build a house this big?_ is what Dave wonders as he takes it all in. 

He looks at Rose, who is looking ahead. _Who could stand to live someplace like this?_

Dave remembers being allowed to visit Rose, once, back when they were still teenagers. Even if the house did come off vaguely haunted back then, it definitely wasn’t like _this_. It hadn’t received the Frank Lloyd Wright facelift, anyway. He can hear the waterfall rushing faintly if he strains.

They end up in a dust-caked sitting room, crammed with antique chairs made of polished wood, dank upholstery, and Tiffany lamps. There's a loveseat in the corner that looks inviting, but Dave is unsure if he should sit. 

He pictures Rose’s mother curled up in that very chair, downing a nightcap, and decides he doesn't want to sit anywhere in this house, his tailbone could never taste the sweet embrace of cushionry again, he doesn’t give a fuck. Dave’s heebie-jeebies have reached a fever pitch. He can’t stop imagining things in the dark corners, the liquid slide of tentacles, perhaps, or worms.

Rose is standing in front of the fireplace, staring down a mantel populated by photographs of herself as a child. Dave lingers by the door.

He can see her face reflected in the big tarnished mirror even though her back is to him. Soot seems to have exploded from inside the fireplace and onto the floor. It looks like black tongues licking towards the tatty rug and threatening to swallow Rose's immaculate heels.

She looks for a while, at the pictures lined up shrine-like on the mantel, and every now and then making shifty eye contact with her own reflection.

Then she reaches out and tips the photos over one by one, until they’re all face down, clean of dust at the edge that had been resting on the mantelpiece, their kite-shaped kickstands erect and at attention. After all the photographs have been tipped, Rose stands inert for a moment that stretches on. She turns to Dave.

“Jesus, I'm being rude. You must be exhausted after all that travel. Want me to find you a guest room? Actually, you can just pick one. They're all empty. Most of them haven’t even been used, really, ever.”

Her words come out in a rush, very loud in the quiet. She looks so overwhelmed, all of the sudden, that Dave can’t help but wince.

“I'd get lost if I tried exploring.” Dave says. “Just take me to the nearest bed and I'll crash.”

Rose slips back into business mode, looking relieved. Her voice is softer when she speaks again. “Sure. I have just the room in mind. And there's a pizza place that delivers down here. You're hungry, right?”

“Starved.” Says Dave.

The room Rose picks for him is wallpapered blue, with a mobile on the ceiling heavy with model planes and little soccer balls on strings. It's a room for a young boy, but Rose never had a brother.

The bedspread is also blue and smells like mildew. Dave lies on top of it until the pizza arrives, and he and Rose eat it at a long dining table with a lace runner down the middle.

She disappears for a while and comes back with two bottles of red wine and a tall white candle in a brass holder. Rose leans over and lights it with a conspiratory smile, then lights a cigarette and uncorks the wine.

The pizza has pepperoni on top, and Dave discreetly picks them off before he eats his slice. Since they last saw each other, Dave has become a vegetarian, but he doesn't want to bring it up now, and either way Rose is too wrapped up in her wine, and in watching the candle burn, to notice what he’s up to. He’s never seen her smoke before. 

They’ve both changed; Dave wonders how much. They spend the rest of dinner making difficult small-talk. Rose wants to talk about his latest artistic project, and the bookstore clerk with whom she’s been engaging in conversation recently. She eats three slices of pizza in brisk, purposeful bites. Dave wishes he knew what he was supposed to be doing here.

It takes Dave a long time to get to sleep, his first night. He can’t seem to get used to the smell of the bedsheets no matter how hard he inhales, and the shadows at the edge of the room scintillate in the corner of his eye every time he’s close to drifting off. He catches himself wishing for a night light, or anything at all to ward off the dark.

The noises don’t help, either. It’s as if the house itself is groaning, crying out, speaking in arthritic tongues and with creaking throats a language older than consciousness. Old beams and wet rot. 

Eventually it begins to rain, and the sound of the drops hitting the roof is enough to lull Dave to sleep.

After the funeral, Rose takes him to a diner. They eat blueberry waffles with enough syrup to drown in, and orange juice on the side. The original plan was to share a stack, but Rose seemed to hold a personal grudge against their meal and attacked it with such cold, businesslike savagery that Dave was compelled to lean back in the booth and let her do her thing. It’s not like she doesn’t have any valid reasons to enact violence on breakfast food. 

The ceremony itself was a circus, every one of Mom Lalonde’s old heartthrobs and colleagues and globetrotting companions and college bffsies, and the chairwoman of Crockertech to boot, all crawled out of the woodwork to send her off. Rose looked miserable, and delivered a biting eulogy that was so caustic, at times, that it made Dave cringe.

By the end of her speech, though, eyes were being daubed throughout the viewing room. Apparently the sarcasm was lost on most of the guest list.

“...Show those around you that you love them, while they’re still here to receive the sentiment. Don’t put off any assurances for tomorrow that you can speak today, for death is a creature that will not procrastinate, and to death, assurances do not mean much. Now, hors d'oeuvres, anyone?”

Rose had stood by the coffin, staring into the distance and making polite conversation. 

Dave has seen her gloomy before. He’s seen her sobbing post-breakup, sadder than anything and madder than hell, but this grim desolation was a new look for her. It carried into their booth at the diner, where she is pushing away the empty plate with its Rorschach smear of syrup and rubbing at her mouth with a napkin like she thinks she can wipe off her lips.

“We shall head home now. Heavens know there are things I need to attend to, back at the mansion. You may accompany me if you wish, otherwise I can assist you in arranging for a flight back to California.”

Dave lifts one shoulder. “I’ll camp out another night. Whatever you need, man.” 

The look she gives him leaves Dave wondering if he should have said something else. Maybe less flippant, but they’re old enough now to know what to expect from each other. Can Dave be blamed, at this point, for coming up short? Does she even want him to stay? 

The prospect of staying in that Scooby-Doo haunted house makes Dave’s spine start jumping and crawling just thinking about it, but the thought of Rose staying there all alone makes him feel worse, like his solar plexus is made of putty, squeezing.

He holds the umbrella above her head as they make a procession through the parking lot to the car, stoically allowing the left side of his suit to become drenched. Not getting the deposit back on that one, no sir. The dude from the rental store probably just sat bolt upright in bed. 

Dave doesn’t care. They make a nice picture together, Rose in a black mourning dress that buttons to the neck and drifts the floor in a writhe of silk and Dave in his suit, ill-fitting in some places but dark and sharp as the dickens. 

No one at the funeral knew who he was, and he didn’t make much talk, just stood in the corner trying to keep his cool. Tried to communicate through his posture that he was, in fact, on the guest list, and not just some interloper who got lost on the way to a different event, which was how he felt. Everyone was chatting and laughing, holding drinks.

The grim feeling refuses to dissipate, even as he puts the rental car in drive and pulls out onto the road. Sun has broken through the gunmetal clouds, like a yolk dribbling out of cracked eggshell. Rose seems to be wilting. 

She doesn’t lean on anything, her spine straight as a rod, not even touching the back of the car-seat; but her head droops on its stalk like an overripe fruit. He doesn’t look at her except for out of the corner of his eye, because he’s scared to. Her skin appears gray, almost, but it has to be a trick of the light. 

Dave is old enough now to know that he isn’t a hero. If he were in a horror movie, there wouldn’t be any show, he’d be backing out of the driveway at the first creaking floor-board. So there isn’t any excuse for him to be staying here. No reason not to head home tonight except for how small and defeated Rose looks, crumpled in the passenger seat like a used tissue.

He drives her all the way home, pretending that their fuel-efficient two-seater is the Mystery Machine and wishing that Scooby and Shaggy were along for the ride.

Rose’s condition has deteriorated by the time they reach her mother’s house. The crunching of gravel beneath his tires is unbearably loud to Dave as he pulls off the beaten path and into drive. 

Maybe it’s the silence that is suffocating. It feels like every sound is being sucked out of the air and into a Rose-shaped black hole beside him, engulfed by the strength of her misery. 

Or maybe he’s just not used to being so far from a city. Rainbow Falls, seven hours from Manhattan by road, forty miles divorced from the nearest town. Here, it gets truly dark at night. The sky is now an inky shade of blue, and Dave’s headlights cast long, sharp shadows as he pulls into the drive.

He opens the door for her, ever the gentleman, but still can’t bring himself to look her in the face as she touches his arm for balance, bids him a quiet thank-you and heads inside. Standing by the car, watching Rose move towards the house, Dave can’t bear how small she looks. Thrown dissolutely in the mist and the chalk-white porchlight, which sensing motion has shuttered on, even her shadow looks undersized and sad.

She’s also tottering disconcertingly. Dave ponies up and crunches gravel underfoot so he can guide her through the door with a light hand on her back. With his other hand, he flicks on the light and moths scatter. He spends a moment feeling undeniably grim about the possibility of spending another night in this horror house. Then he thinks about Rose and decides to stop being such a wimp. 

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he leads them inside to the nearest living room.

Rose doesn’t want to do much but collapse on the nearest chaise lounge and uncork a bottle of wine. Her skin does actually look a little gray, under closer inspection. Dark-ish, chalky, but it could just be the cast of the room. Everything looks ghoulish when it’s lit up with a burnt-out bulb on a fossilized gas lamp. 

A trick of the light. That, or the grief.

“Here.” Rose says, handing Dave a glass of wine. 

“A toast. This is from my mother’s extensive wine cellar, located in the dank underbelly of her estate. I don’t suppose she’d mind us sampling her selection.”

Dave accepts the glass and swirls it, watching the wine go round. “Yeah, I heard she’s got something else going on.”

Rose looks at Dave for a moment, then laughs and takes a long drink from her glass. 

“It’s vintage, nineteen-sixty-three. An impetuous Beaujolais, mostly fruity with scant, tannic notes. Exactly to her liking. If she knew we were sampling her stock, the matriarch would be absolutely furious.” 

She stares into her wine, squinting. Her pupils are so large that her scleras almost look black, with her eyelids low. 

“Yes,” Rose says. “It is to our good fortune that she isn’t returning, then.” She laughs again, somewhat cruelly.

Dave tries to think back to when Bro died. He received a letter from the hospital, the day after. 

In the months after he’d left home, Dave changed all his numbers, disconnected all his accounts, the whole deal, no looking back shit. At the time, he didn’t think he was running away, but that’s the term that fits best, for what happened. One day Bro took it too far and Dave went out for a drive and didn’t come back. He cut off contact, didn’t look back either.

But they found him anyway, through paperwork. Bro had died somewhere in Nevada of a brain hemorrhage. Dave had to fly there to identify the body. He stayed in a resort hotel with a casino, thinking he could turn the trip into a fun vacation, but he ended up being catatonic the entire time.

The body had looked very worn out. All Dave had to do was nod, say _yeah, that’s your guy_ and sign the paperwork for cremation. After the trip, he slept for days. But he was never like _this_ \-- teetering, unhinged.

He doesn’t know what Rose would have said to him back then. They were never like that, with each other. Raw displays of emotion were beyond the capacity of their friendship, or at least that was how it seemed a lot of the time. 

Anyway, when Bro died she was in New York and he was in Los Angeles. And right now, he’s on the loveseat and she’s on the chaise lounge. They’re sharing her dead mother’s wine, and he doesn’t have a single clue what to say to her.

"This is how she would have expected me to act, isn’t it?” Rose continues after Dave fails to respond. 

“Christ, what kind of a daughter was I?” She finishes her wine and pours herself more with crisp, efficient movements. “What kind of a fucking daughter was I?”

She’s gazing into her glass like she thinks she can dismantle it with the force of her stare. Dave feels the need to act decisively. “Rose, c’mon, you did the best you could do. Your relationship was complicated, you know that. Her dying doesn’t change any of the bullshit.”

Rose straightens and looks him in the eye, and even though he can’t see shit in the dim with his shades on, he’s grateful to them for saving him from the venom in that look.

“No.” She says. 

“No. I don’t suppose it does. She was already dead for a fucking decade, after all, decaying on some ornate armchair, regarding her statues of wizards and her gilded fucking vacuum cleaner.”

“I could have visited her, Dave! Eased her suffering. She died of liver failure. Maybe I could have helped her. “

“Me, her daughter, the one person in the _world_ with whom she has an immutable bond. A bond that can not and _should_ not be severed by anything as petty as the shunned whims of a child, or, _alcoholism._ ” 

Shaking, Rose busies herself with tipping the bottle into her mouth. But Dave can still see her crying.

“Rose…” He says. She hunches her shoulders and twists away from him, her chin dimpling wretchedly. 

When Dave moves next to her and wraps an arm around her shoulders, she doesn’t stop him. 

“Rose, it’s okay.” He tries.

That sounds lame, even to him, but to his horror, he’s a little buzzed off of the wine and it’s all he can come up with. 

After a while: “You’re gonna be okay.”

Nice one, buddy. That’s a condolence for the books. He rubs Rose’s arm and rocks her into his chest, keeps rocking her for a while.

Rose cries for a long time. At some points she seems to be screaming through her teeth like an animal. Muttering to herself, strange liquid sounds. Her whole body is shivering tremendously. After she’s been silent for a while, she speaks into Dave’s chest.

“I’m terribly sorry for that outburst. I fear I haven’t been properly drunk in a long while.” She tells him. Dave nods. 

She pulls herself crisply out of his arms. “I’m going to bed now.”

Rose turns and walks up the nearest flight of stairs. She’s looking away when she bids Dave good-night.

When Dave opens his eyes the next morning, the little boy’s bedroom takes a moment to resolve in front of his eyes. He was dreaming about darkness, the color black turned inside out and shimmering with little rows of teeth. Tentacles, a sense of space more damp and massive than an industrial meat locker. The same vague, medical smell. Old death.

Outside the mansion, there is mist pressing against the window like it’s trying to get inside. As Dave sits up in bed, last night’s dream dissipating in a shiver down his spine, he gets a better view. The window seems to have had its contents erased; the dense, thick fog is flush with the border between outdoors and in. Dave pulls the dusty blue quilt around his shoulders and feels grateful for the advent of modern heating, even though the hot air that belches from this haunted freakshow’s stained metal radiators smells like moth-balls and never seems to stick.

The hardwood panels are so warped and old that the grain sticks up in ridges and digs into the soles of Dave’s feet, even through his thick wool socks. He sees why those old timey dudes used to walk around in slippers and hats, carrying little candles. Pre-colonial heating systems. This house was probably built before the advent of the steam engine. 

At least, some of it. The more of the house he sees, the less he can pin the architecture to any one historical time period. It’s kind of shocking, to think he could possibly use anything he learned in college to a practical end, but it’s the history course he sat through, for the liberal arts degree he abandoned, is his saving grace right now. Dave remembers getting a C.

He’s still not sure the course was worth what he paid for it, college loans being a financial burden that proved untenable in the long run, and one which he resents daily. But he can certainly discern different types of ornamental columns, and he’s even got a middling grasp on time periods in Victorian roofing. The house is a weird patchwork, and so damnably sprawling, that it might have been renovated and expanded over the course of a century. 

How much spookier could this situation get? Dave moves towards the window and angles his gaze at the glass. Maybe if he can catch it at the right angle, he’ll glimpse something through the whiteness. Headlights, birdflight, a bare black tree. Anything. It’s so quiet. 

A draft cuts through the room, so cold it cuts through Dave and snags on his bones. He shivers. Wants very badly, all of the sudden, not to be alone.

Looking out into that void, his thoughts take on a similar dizzy blankness. Oh, right. Things ended on a sour note with Rose, last night. The events fall back into place with a dusty thud. She was drunk, gray and crying. Dave totally clammed up. He winces, presses his forehead to the iceplate glass. It seems to clear his head a little, or else the point of intense cold serves to help him focus.

Mom Lalonde’s prize cabernet no longer coursing through his system, Dave figures the best thing to do would be to find Rose, scrounge up some breakfast, and see where it goes from there.

The door to Dave’s lodgings is white-washed, furred with dust. There’s a hook screwed into the middle, but Dave’s own jacket is in a bundle on the floor. It protrudes, bare and vaguely accusing. Perhaps crooked, finger-like: come hither.

The draft is back, or maybe it’s inside of Dave, now. Damn pre-colonial climate control. He can feel his bones buzzing like a phone on vibrate. He can’t shake the creeping feeling that if he opened the door, there might be more of the same white nothing, waiting on the other side. 

Yesterday, Rose was there at 6AM to get him ready for the wake. Today, Dave is probably gonna have to find his way downstairs by himself. 

Whatever. He’s glad Rose let him sleep in, even. He can definitely feel some kind of mild hangover, dampening all his nerves and making the room lurch. Figures that the Lalonde spirit cellar is full of sugary French swill. Sweet alcohol always messes with Dave the morning after. His head hurts like hell. He’d kill for a Tylenol and a glass of juice to wash it down.

Dave checks the time.

His stomach lurches when he sees the number on his lockscreen. Definitely just his red wine hangover, compounded by the disorienting feeling of seeing a different figure on the clockface than what he expects. It's past noon. Dave’s sense of time is usually impeccable. He would have guessed it to be early morning, but there’s really no way to tell with the fog so thick. Rose really let him oversleep.

Which means she’ll probably be awake, and full of piss and vinegar at his indolence besides. 

Dave’s pretty sure he can remember the way to the kitchen, anyway. It’s a big house, but it follows some kind of logic. Dave pushes open the door.

The carpet is a time-bleached lavender shag. At the first turn, it transitions into an oriental runner cutting through hardwood. On the walls next to Dave, the wallpaper seems to have been collaged by a time-traveling toddler. Pinstripes peeling off to reveal baroque pheasants and roses. Then a patch done in 50s pastels. Then gilt mandalas on rich red. 

Eventually he reaches the stairs. Peering down from the precipice, they seem vertiginously steep, descending into shadow. Dave descends. 

The kitchen, when he finds it, is 60s to the extreme, yellow and green wallpaper, orange formica with blue. But Rose isn’t in it, and the next kitchen he finds has a smartfridge and stainless steel countertops. 

Dave pauses there to check the contents of the shelves. Mostly it’s dust. The refrigerator's widescreen display is blank. Its interior is white and humming and cold, but contains no food. 

Dave continues.

As he passes through parlor, through dressing room, through bedroom and dining hall and foyer and still sees no sign of Rose, Dave’s fear rises in his throat like a creeping tide. The rooms blur together, improbable color palettes and design schemes forming a frenzied backdrop to Dave’s panic. Where the hell was she? His phone’s still on the bedside table. Would he even be able find his way back to where he started and call her?

The only option seems to be moving forward. Dave tears through the house until he’s nearly running, like he thinks he can escape what’s in front of him by charging at it fast enough.

Until he finds himself in a room with no doors. The lighting is dark red, a terribly modern set-up shining out from the back of a minibar, which also serves as the room’s only feature. 

Maybe minibar is an understatement. The room isn’t large, but the bar takes up the whole thing. Exotic twists and bulbs of colored glass, lined up as precisely as toy soldiers on glass shelves that line every wall. There are martini shakers and lime smudgers and shot glasses, more fiddly instruments for crafting drinks than Dave can really name, gleaming behind the bar. Uniform, unmelting cubes of ice in a small metal bucket.

As Dave moves towards the bar, he notices a gray, circular platform, raised perhaps a foot in the center of the room. On its face is inscribed six crescents like fingernails, arranged into a circle, glowing softly blue. 

Dave steps on top of it.

The tasteful minibar shifts. The fog is there in the room with Dave, but only for an instant, a flash of cold white. Then it’s gone, taking wherever Dave was before with it. He seems to be in some kind of derelict laboratory.

It’s dim, and green. Dave hears faint, echoey sloshes coming from variable, indeterminate distances. The sound breaks like the room Dave’s standing in is _big_ , but the shadows creep very close indeed, so that he can’t see more than a few feet in any direction. Infrared suggestions of keyboards, wires, towering vats roiling with dark shapes inside. 

“Rose?” Dave shouts into the air. 

The void swallows his voice whole. It doesn’t even echo properly, just hits a wall in the air and dies on impact.

Seeint no other option, Dave steps down from where he seems to have been transported to a different platform. His feet slosh as they touch down; already he can feel cold liquid seeping into his shoes. 

This platform is similar to the first one, except the inscription is different. The flat round face shows a stylized sun, glowing faintly gold. Dave turns his back on it. He picks a direction and starts walking. 

He walks for a very long time.

So long that concepts like _time_ and _distance_ seem to lose their meaning, like how when you repeat a word enough it falls to syllables with nothing attached.

The lab equipment suggests a mad scientist running genetic experiments. Unrecognizable shadows move inside the glass vats of green fluid, ultrasound blurs that Dave can’t look at straight-on. There are also more immediately recognizable animal cadavers, preserved with laboratory precision. Specimens, stuffed or on display in little jars. Black cats with too many limbs.

Some of the monitors he passes are lit up. Video feed from security cameras, he assumes, or drone footage. Dave doesn’t stop to investigate. His sodden shoes are numbing his toes. His feet are so sore they scream with every step. Nothing could slow him down. He’s going to find Rose, and then, maybe they’ll get breakfast.

It is this single-minded determination to save his friend that keeps him from sitting down at any of the computers and taking a look. Definitely nothing to do with the fact that some of the windows seem to be playing videos from his life, fragments of memories shot from the second-person that overcome Dave with vertigo if he even lets himself glance. 

Grit teeth, move leg, one foot in front of the other. Bubble, bubble, go the sinister tubes dangling momentously above in loops. Slosh go his sneakers, tripping over wires.

There’s a warm, golden light. Maybe it’s getting brighter the longer Dave continues; really, he can’t be sure. An incremental gradiation in the texture of the air. Without him even noticing, the scenery is slowly being dyed.

All Dave needs to do is keep walking. Keeping a steady, even stride, he advances towards the light.

Eventually, he finds himself in a living room. It’s storming outside, and the lights are off. The occasional flash of lightning serves as the only illumination; every so often there’s a crack of white light followed by thunder, drawing towering statues of wizards into sharp relief.

Dave blinks, trying to think of where he could be. It looks like Rose’s living room did when he visited as a teen. Definitely the same weird wizardly decor.

He hears voices, coming from a pocket of darkness that might contain a couch.

“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t want you to think that you did anything wrong.”

The voice is unfamiliar to Dave’s ears, but sounds, he thinks, a bit like Rose.

“But mother…!”

And that voice literally _is_ Rose. He wants to cry out, let her know he’s here, but something stops him. His voice dies at the foot of that dense, black vacuum.

“How could I not blame myself. After I went to college, I never visited you. I -- I hated you! For every mistake I ever made in my life, I simply found a way to blame you. Each self fulfilling prophecy, for which _I myself_ both reaped the seeds and sowed the consequences, _alone_... All of it, just an excuse not to feel _guilty_.”

Lightning blinks through the room. Rose is on a long sofa, lying on her back. Seated in a separate chair nearby, talk-therapy style, is a tall blonde woman who must be Rose’s mom. Dave doesn’t get a good read on the scene. As soon as the shapes appear, they are gone, and six seconds later there’s a boom of thunder that shakes the world.

“I never wanted to be like you.” Says Rose’s voice. “That’s the real reason, why I hated you. Because I am like you. I'm just like you, and I don't know what to do.”

“Oh, Rosie.” Says her mother. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Mom, stop that!”

“Stop what, darling?”

Dave wishes he could see what was going on. The blank void is hurting his eyes.

“Don't bother being saccharine. Drop the pretenses already. You can't be sarcastic with me. Not right now. I’m-- I’m baring my soul to you, mother. If you understood me at all, it would make you weep!”

“But Rosie, I don’t understand you at all.”

“You… Yes, you did! You always knew exactly what I was going to do, before I even did it. Without fail. Everything I wanted, you delivered in excess. As if to shame me out of wanting those things in the first place. A pony, a career as a novelist. A funeral for my dead cat.”

“Oh, darling. How I wish I really was the person you dreamed me up to be. Don’t you know I was guessing the entire time? Filling in the gaps that you left for me? And there’s so much that you still don’t know… So much I never got to tell you. I was too afraid.”

“ _You_ were afraid, mother? Of _me_?”

“Rose, you were an incredibly frightening child. So vicious and intense. And so very smart. So precocious. And willful, and intelligent. You seemed to have a preternatural scope, even when you were very young. But there was so much that escaped you.”

Lightning strikes, and before thunder has a chance to follow along after, the scene has changed. Rose is still lying supine on that therapy couch, and her mother is still in the high-backed leather throne, but somehow they seem to be situated _behind_ the scene. 

And don’t even ask where Dave is, because he doesn’t have a clue. Somewhere behind that, behind everything, watching it all go down.

There’s a figure standing in the middle of a blue-lit bathroom, gripping the sink, staring into the drain. They have long brown limbs sticking out of a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and white-blond hair cut extremely short. The mirror reflects their face, which is stricken, and looks a lot like Rose.

They’re holding a pregnancy test and crying. Dave can’t even begin to formulate an opinion on what he’s seeing. 

“I was so young when I had you, Rosie. Obviously, I loved every minute we spent together. Of course I never regretted it, not once I actually held you in my arms. You were my precious daughter, and I loved you more than anything.”

“Mother. What did I tell you about getting saccharine.”

“Oh, sweetie... I wish you didn’t always think I was lying to you.”

Rose is staring at her young mother, who is currently sitting on the toilet seat and hyperventilating. Meanwhile Rose’s adult mother continues to speak. 

“We met at university. MIT. I was… young. We both were. Scholarship students, the two of us. Outcasts, who were certain that as long as we were smarter and more successful than the people who rejected us, their scorn wouldn’t matter.”

“And he was smarter than me, without a doubt. That man might have changed the world, if he was given the chance.”

The door to the bathroom opens. On the other side of the door is Dave’s bro, or at least how he might have looked if he was currently majoring in computer science.

Yeah. Dave couldn’t react to that one even if he tried.

“Is it.” Says Dave’s bro. “Did you..?”

Rose’s mom nods. “Yeah. Yeah."

Then Rose’s mom starts to laugh. They laugh for a long time, while Dave’s bro just kind of stands there, watching, a crease forming between his brows.

After a truly intense gigglefit, Rose’s mom quiets down and smiles, a little wistfully.

“Dirk... we’re pregnant! It’s a miracle!”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Roxy."

Rose's mom frowns, and Dave's bro sighs heavily.

"I'm sorry, Roxy, but this is not a fucking miracle. We have to, to take care of this. I mean, it’s not the end of the world, but we have _got_ to figure this shit out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we can’t -- _keep_ it, can we? Do you want to give birth? You’re not even a woman.”

Unexpectedly, Rose’s mom starts to cry. Dave’s bro moves into the bathroom, but stays leaning against the sink, shifting awkwardly.

“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.” He says. "I should have been more careful."

“I’m keeping it. It’s mine, I’m keeping it.” Says Rose’s mom. "You can't make me give her up."

Lightning cracks. They’re back in the living room, which all cast in shadow is really no better than being nowhere at all. The possibility of wizard statues, of a couch and a chair.

“...I had no idea.” Says Rose.

 _That makes two of us_ , thinks Dave.

“Of course you didn’t, honey bunch. I never told you.”

“I never asked.”

“Rose… you were a _child_. You never did realize that. I thought I was doing the right thing by playing along. That you were a smart kid with a big imagination who needed an intellectual equal to feel stimulated. I didn’t understand, back then, that you really were just a little girl."

"The fact that I _made_ you -- that I created you, from nothing, out of myself. That was something that never ceased to confound me. It frightened me. But I never wanted to make you feel like you were just another one of my creations.”

“...I never realized that you were. I mean. In college, with that man, that you used to be..." "Even when I came out to _you_. When I told you I was a lesbian. Why did you never tell me, that you were...?”

“Oh, that.”

Rose’s mother laughs. It’s a sophisticated, feminine sound.

“I suppose that whatever I was back then, I'm not, anymore. I had a lot of big ideas, when I was younger. A lot of dreams, some of which I achieved, others of which fell through the cracks. And there are things like you, which appeared without me asking for them at all, and gave my life meaning, in the end."

"Anyway, nothing really matters much, anymore. Now that I'm dead, all that I really want to think about is you, Rose. The wonderful life that you’re going to live, after I'm gone.”

The storm seems to be letting up. Dave can hear the pattering of raindrops take on a different cadence, and eventually it ceases altogether. The room dissolves into a sourceless, featureless light. Rose stands in the middle of it, facing her mom.

“I’m sorry I never visited you."

"Really, it's alright. I wouldn't have been very good company."

Rose grimaces. "It's just that, as gratuitously morbid as this may sound to you... It was one of my most long-held and genuine desires, to be the one to record your last words.”

Rose’s mom giggles. The laugh doesn’t sound like something that could come out of a washed-up, sixty-year-old alcoholic. She looks younger, around the same age as Rose herself. Her affect is buoyant, youthful.

“You really are the sweetest! In your own way, tee hee.”

Rose strains a smile. Her mom grins back, a real one, with all the teeth.

“I’ll tell you what they were, if you really want to know.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course."

Rose's mom is looking at her very sadly, and with a lot of love.

"I would do anything for you, my darling. I would have done anything you wanted, if only you had asked.”

She pulls Rose into a hug. They hold each other for a long time, out there in the field of white light. Dave resists the urge to cuff his heel and start whistling, because they’re both crying and he kinda feels bad for intruding on their moment. But they don't seem to notice, and he isn’t actually sure where his physical body is, anyway. It isn’t too long before they pull apart.

Rose’s mother whispers something in her ear that makes her mouth quirk in a small laugh. 

"Really?" Rose asks. "Is that what they were? Oh, mother, I could never write that down. That's not even lame enough to be ridiculous."

"Then write whatever you'd like, darling. Fill in the blank."

Rose's mom turns and looks straight at Dave. He holds the eye-contact for a super-charged instant, then everything blinks out.

They find themselves at the bottom of a long ladder. Or rather, Dave finds themselves. Rose is passed out in a gray heap, profoundly unconscious. There are black tears forming perfect streaks down her face, the grayscale virgin of Guadalupe.

When he hoists her onto his back, Rose wakes up enough to grip her arms around Dave’s neck and hold on for dear life. 

Every rung on the ladder is murder. Dave’s body has been through the ringer today, forget about his mind, and every muscle is hot and dissonant with weariness. Grab the rung, pull. Grab the next one. Pull.

The manhole approaches slowly. It opens with the merest push, swinging open with a gust of cool, fresh air. Somehow Dave manages to hoist their bodies through, and they’re free, falling down onto a stone floor.

They don’t lay there too long. Rose sits up after a few short moments, seemingly reanimated with a sense of purpose. Her eyes are darting around, getting a read of their surroundings.

“Where the hell are we?” Dave croaks.

“Jaspers’ mausoleum.” Replies Rose. 

She picks herself up off the ground, and Dave can see that her skin is no longer gray, that her face, while puffy, is not streaked with black ichor.

He pushes himself up into a seated position and gets a look around. They’re in a mausoleum, alright. There’s a coffin in the center, stone walls and less than four square feet to move around in. Rose can stand without a problem, but Dave would have to stoop. 

“Wasn’t Jaspers a cat?” Dave asks.

Rose turns to glare daggers at him. “He was the greatest cat who ever lived. It is only fitting that he receive the rites of a king.”

She runs her hand over the small coffin in the center of the room. Dave is glad when she removes it without opening the lid.

“...Am I your uncle?” Dave says.

Rose responds slowly, thoughtfully. “I am not sure.”

Fair enough. Dave finally manages to stand, nearly knocking his head on the low granite ceiling.

“Wanna get something to eat?” He asks.

Rose opens the door to the mausoleum. Outside, they’re greeted by a bright, spring day. 

“I would like that very much.”

They step out into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> FULL LIST OF CONTENT WARNINGS:
> 
> [child abuse mention (dave and bro, oblique), reference to detransitioning of a nonbinary character, the Referenced/Implied Transphobia tag refers to a comment made about a nonbinary character becoming pregnant, mentions of alcoholism, general horror]


End file.
